A Day at The Cottage Gallery

Dennie Hahn couldn’t have picked a better place to open her art gallery. Los Rios Street in San Juan Capistrano, California snuggles up to the railroad track lending its peaceful old worldliness to the frequent clang of warning bells and noisy entrance and exit of the Surfliner train and its Metro cousins. An occasional car passes through carefully, a delivery truck or the U.S. Mail wagon. No vehicle is allowed to stay except maybe a bicycle hugging a picket fence or a baby carriage or tricycle with its family. People stroll down the middle of this narrow street as if they own it, and they do. 

From the 1800’s these little houses have survived since their first resident families gave way to the coffee shop, the outdoor restaurants, the tea room and gift shops. The street needed an art gallery and close to a hundred a day are drawn in to this one. Other quaint shops and restaurants, all carefully restored modest dwellings with old-fashioned gardens of hollyhocks, geraniums, jasmine and morning glorys, surprise those who come to this famous old mission town where "The Swallows Come Back to Capistrano." Only the trees could tell of the history here but they don’t. One has to dig to find it.

  

Sufficient to most is the peaceful awe of Los Rios Street, and I sit enjoying it on a wicker chair on the front porch of the gallery taking in the beauty and wonder of the place while people come and go exchanging greetings. Often a husband or two will hang around the little garden behind the picket fence out by the front gate while the women go in, but soon there will be an urgent call from the front door. “Come in here, Hank, you’ve got to see this!”

 The gallery truly is a perfect asset to Los Rios Street. Its thirty plus artists of various mediums quietly draw a hushed “Wow!” from the lips of even the men who have reluctantly come in. Dennie’s standards are high and her presentation of each artist, including herself, is perfect. The variety of paintings, sculpture, glasswork, jewelry, photography, silk screen artists, and even vintage caps is so beautifully featured in these rooms and even outside this little house, one could stay for hours taking it all in. Often other artists will stop by to set up their easels and paint in its garden. Or a Gallery class will take place under the tall trees.

The Gallery artists themselves take turns managing the place for a day or two or three a month. When I come with my daughter, Robin, I sit out on the porch and work on my latest piece of clay sculpture, faces and heads of people out of the past. Today I am not sculpting but rather writing this blog. The Cottage Gallery is new and I want to tell about it but am searching for words to do it justice. 

As I sit here with my white hair, long skirt and grandmotherly look, I probably fit the scene. And I do feel perfectly at home. If one or two want to they can join me to enjoy this front porch perch, visit a while or find another quiet place in the garden out in back or the patio on the side. It’s entertainment in itself to drink in the serenity here punctuated by the frequent trains that plow through on their way up and down the coast. 

The next time you want to get away from it all and step into a small wonder-world, come along and join us at The Cottage Gallery. You too will be quietly wowed!

A Words Only Friendship

His name is Fredric Klees. I’ve known him for years through his book, The Round of the Year. I can’t remember if I just stumbled on the book while browsing through some library shelves or if someone recommended it to me. It’s an almanac of a year in his life when he tried to find at least one flower in bloom every day. In Pennsylvania that would not be easy.

Some entries are so brief as to be one or two liners, but others stretch over a page or two. What intrigues me is that I got to know him (and even maybe fall a bit in love with him) though I never saw a picture of him. He wrote rarely about his occupation, (professor at Swarthmore College), his students, his friends or relatives, his marital history and such. Obviously, he loved nature and meant to share that interest, but his personal life rides quietly in the back seat. And I’m not one to pry, even on Google.

He had a little stone house beside a waterfall, which he portrayed in delicate pen and ink on the book cover, and he spoke of the weather, wildlife, and occasional visits to his stepmother’s little farm within a few hours' drive from him. He was obviously fond of her but there’s no mention of his own mother. His father, the lone parent in his childhood, is spoken of fondly with a few flash-backs but personal references seem carefully edited. Is that the way of the Pennsylvania Dutch? There is no picture of Fredric Klees on the book jacket. In my mind’s eye the man is portrayed not in the flesh but in his words, his interests, the occasional betrayal of a gentle man content with a bachelor life and glad to share his interest in flowers and nature in his book.  

There is one longer entry of a day on a walk with a young woman into the woods and their discovery of an old abandoned house. Without saying as much you can sense his feelings for her but that, the only hint of a possible love interest, was left hanging in the air. Who knows what became of her? I wish I could find a biographical reference somewhere to satisfy my curiosity. On the other hand I’d rather not. There’s just enough of him in the book and by reading along with him through the year, one day at a time. I’ve done this two or three times, and he’s become a friend to me, though I am unknown to him.

Most Fridays I’d be getting ready to leave now for the Senior Center to play bridge. Ir's about a mile or so up the street Today the whole building was taken over by some school to offer classes in art so I’m at home alone. When I came across this book on the shelf next to my bed I decided to get it out again. Since it was copyrighted in 1963 I’d guess he wrote it in ’62. 

He begins his entry with “A perfect day with a flawless sky of jay blue. The air crisp and refreshing, the sun just warm enough to be pleasant on the back. ...I drove out into the country...and then down to Brandywine, where I saw a white heron intent on fish. There was goldenrod everywhere and wild asters, masses of pale blue.” 

Couldn’t you just see yourself in the passenger seat?

Intoxication of Joy That Sticks

It’s a clear and sunny afternoon and I’m feeling high as a kite. Not from the ice water I’ve been drinking or any other kind of drink. This feeling must be coming from a mixture of things. One is the music I’m playing as I write. It’s Western country and some other numbers I’m especially fond of like Skylark and Speak Low. And this one - Sixteen Tons! Boz Scaggs sings it just right. I can hardly sit here. I want to dance! Even Tommy, my canary, has joined in, proving he's a better and louder songster!

Another reason I’m feeling this way may be because of the new arrangement of my desk area. Now I can look out on the little creek and foliage and flowers around it beneath the tall pine trees as I write. Those of my sort know the excitement that can be derived from moving furniture. After the job is done, of course.

My high could be coming from the fact that I just finished painting my latest sculpture. He’s a quirky man wearing a feather in his cap and a smile that is so fetching he’s got me smiling too. I can’t take the look off my face and he surely can’t take it off his! I painted him gray to look like the raw clay he came from. He’s one of the”Old Souls” who come so effortlessly out of lumps of clay for me that I can’t take an ounce of credit for them. I love them all! The Garden Gallery sold one the other day. My first sale. Someone was willing to write a check for $85. to take little “Sister Carrie” home. As pleased as I am for the fact that she’s found a loving home, I’m sad too to think I’d  sell her at any price. It seems almost sacrilegious. 

Another reason I’m feeling so exhilarated is that Katie, my live-in granddaughter, has found an artistic outlet too. She’s doing some calligraphy for a neighbor, copying well-wishers‘ notes on the mat of a picture of their wedding portrait. She has a unique style of penmanship that she's hoping might give her a little side business of her own. It’s so good to see Katie eager to get home from her new job to work on her art. A new job she likes, and now this too! And never far from her thoughts is the number of days when Jeff, her new husband will be coming home! The number is growing shorter all the time. It’s a happy household we share these days!

I think everyone has within him or her an artistic talent or some passion to feed the soul, and when they find it they’ll float ten feet high. If they’ve known the happiness of a deep love for one to call their own, then, then I think they’ve glimpsed God! When we can embrace all mankind in love, then, then, we may get more than a glimpse! 

Dear Readers, I hope you're feeling high today too!

Who's the Boss Here Anyway?

What day of the week is this? What do you want for breakfast? What will you wear today? What appointments are on your calendar? If you can stay at home what will you do at home?

In that order these are the questions I ask myself as I get up in the morning. I’m blessed, I know, not to be readying myself to go to work for someone else. What I find frustrating is the fact that I work, nevertheless, for someone. Me. I’m my own boss. And I’m my own employee. Because I’ve been free to choose between these most of my life it’s been a continuous see-saw deciding between the two positions. I never know which one will weigh the most. And here I am in my late eighties and still having to come to grips with it.

Outside of my own home I have the luxury of being excused from participation in work. People don’t expect a lot from the elderly. You just get admired, not for the things you do, but for the fact that you’re still around, still looking quite good. The walking cane, I’ve found, gives you added deference. Carry it as an ornament, not as a necessity. Walk erect and briskly and you get the benefit of both respect and admiration. Dress with imagination, wear make-up in moderation, comb your hair in an easy style suited to you, and you’ve got it made.

There is, though, this thing called self-satisfaction. I’ve read that we’re only deeply satisfied when we can feel some conscious worth in what we are and what we do. So, there’s the rub. 

The Bible says, “Let all things be done decently and in order.” 1st Corinthians 14:40  Ok, I say to myself, but what is the definition of order? My dictionary says, “A state in which everything is in its appropriate place. And “decently?” An “acceptable standard.” 

My boss-self and employee-self begin immediately to see-saw. Employee-self, looks for a loophole. Ah ha! That word “acceptable.” An acceptable standard to whom? Right there the see-saw starts moving faster. My boss, the strict and conscientious side of me, wants to see her surroundings in perfect order. The employee me is more interested in getting the job done so things look good, and the standard of that depends on who’s coming to my house to see. Will they be perfectionists? If I expect no one, my “standard” goes down like Newton’s apple. I can excuse myself big time when I find something more fun to do. Then I brush aside the boss of me, let loose the employee, and I’m out the door again; to heck with other people’s standards! 

I blame my mother for being this way. She was particular about housekeeping. As soon as I was old enough to wield a polishing rag and use it to dust furniture I was expected to make things shine and until they did I could not go out to play. She set such a high standard on housekeeping that even today, seventy-some years later, the boss in me expects that high standard and the child in me rebels.

Crazy, isn’t it? I’ve even unearthed past resentments against other perfectionists, like the girl, Georgia, who came to our town when we were sophomores in high school. She was the one who got a straight A or A+ in every class and was determined to end up as valedictorian at graduation time. She did, of course. I suppose I’d had it in mind myself deep down but I gave up striving for top grades and settled back into an “acceptable standard” to myself rather than trying to beat Georgia. I even prided myself in not letting pride drive me into competition. I was fifth in a class of 30. Ever since I’ve consciously muted the perfectionist me and settled for the good enough.

Funny how things like that come to the surface when you’re in your senior senior years, if (and “if” is a big word!) you stop to think about them at all.

I’d thought to stay home and clean house today but I got an offer to go out with my daughter. A car trip to a near-by town, maybe a lunch out too. A Goldilocks day, neither too warm or too cold. How could I say no? How could I side with my boss? I’m a free soul. And I am letting the employee go. Whoopee! I’m out the door!

Conjecture, Invention or Revelation?

“Oh, Joycie, you’re a dreamer!” I was about ten then and had discovered Aunt Jenny’s True Life Story, a serial radio program. I forget what time of day it came on but there was a spell one summer when I made it a point to sit down in the living room and listen to it. It might have been a transition from night time stories my parents used to tell us.  Somehow the radio stories were even more fascinating than movie or TV stories because I could use my imagination to picture them. Entertainment is better when it makes us participate.

One day as I was listening to my Aunt Jenny’s True Life Story Daddy passed by me on his way upstairs. I said, “Daddy, I’ll bet someday there will be movies on the radio.” That’s when he called me a dreamer. I didn’t know then that some “dreamers” in laboratories were making that dream true. Later, in the summer of 1939, our family went to the San Francisco World’s Fair and saw one of the first television sets before it was ready for marketing. It was in the General Electric Exhibit. I said, “See, Daddy, I told you so!” 

With me, the idea had been mere conjecture. With the inventors it was scientific development. I’m good at conjecture but if I were set back in time and could remember things from the future like radio, TV, vacuum cleaners, microwave ovens, and even electricity, I could not produce any of them. I could use the wheel, the inclined plane, a pulley, a ladder. I could make a swing, providing I could make a rope strong enough. If I could make a swing I'd be so happy I’d probably retire!

Now, when it comes to conjecture, that’s something I’m good at. I can dream up things like a reverse gravity belt to carry me up and away. I can imagine a device that can place a receptor on a distant planet. a planet so distant that the light from earth reaching that planet today left our earth centuries ago. Then I can imagine a telescope connected to that receptor that could show me historical events in real time. I can imagine having far more senses than the five we now possess. I can imagine being able to see civilization on Mars or Venus or any of the other planets, civilizations that we don’t see now because we think they are not there. Our limited perceptions and senses don’t allow that. 

Conjecture is mostly impractical and it would be a waste of time to dwell on such guesswork for long, yet even scientists sometimes start with conjecture. I admire the marvelous leaps of imagination they are able to make practical. 

I sometimes wonder if that old saying, “There is nothing new under the sun,” could be true. Are we humans dreamers and inventors of things new, or are we opening our eyes to things long remembered? Are we learning like babies learn, through experimentation and observation? Is there a reality here that is far beyond our capacity to imagine, much less experience? I can’t swear to it, but I can conjecture. Maybe I’ll get past the “I can’t “ mode and start saying, “I can.” If I’m given eternity anything is possible. If I depend on time “I can’t” is the answer. If there’s anything good about dying, it’s finding out if I really am in this body or if the body was in me. While the survivors do what they must with my old body what will I do without it? Will I have another body, another chapter, another book? 

Daddy was right in one sense. If I can’t prove my conjectures don’t waste time on them. Just enjoy what the scientists and inventors have done. Sit and read, play with the gadgets I’ve been given, do the dishes, sweep the floor. Or, yes, I can write another blog!   

Who Needs Grammy or Gramps?

Wally G. and I were talking about the future. You know, like, “What would you do if I went away? (a euphemism for dying.) I couldn’t imagine then what either of us would do without the other but I asked him first. “Why, I’d go to live with Wally K. and Nancy,” he said without hesitation. He and our older son who bore his name, had always been close. 

“Oh, Wally, you wouldn’t do that!” (I thought of how his mother and my aunt had lived with us. How having older folks in your home changed things. How that would set with our daughter-in-law.) His answer though was quick and certain. “Why not? Why, I would be an asset to their home!”  I had to admit, it was a darned good answer. Older people, especially, need to know their worth, not just feel they’re wanted but know they’re wanted, even needed. My mother-in-law, Gracie, had known that. She'd been sometimes feisty, sometimes an irritation, but always sure of herself. In spite of the drawbacks, she was an asset to our home. When both Wally and I were working, the kids, teen agers then, didn’t come home to an empty house. Grandma was back in her room and always ready to play a game of dominoes or rummy. She could tell stories about “the olden days,” or tune into the one TV in our house, hers, and always have a plate of cookies she’d made along with lemonade in her tiny fridge.

When the question turned on me, I said simply, “I don’t know what I’d do without you, Wally.” Then a few years later I was the one left when Wally “went away,” and I had to decide. We’d been living near Seattle, far from our sons who were in the Air Force and Navy, neither of whom would be long in one place. And I was far from our daughter in Southern California. She and her husband had little girls, two at that time and another later. Their business took them away evenings so that they had to rely on baby-sitters for the children. “Mom, won’t you move down here? You could find a place near us and it would be such a help if you could watch over the girls when we’re out at night.” Then she added those words that cinched the question. “Mom, we need you!”

Right now the youngest of my daughter’s girls, Katie, whom I’ve written about in my blogs, is living with me. She’s needed a home to get her life on track. Her mom with a new man, her dad with a new woman, have not been able to provide a place for this daughter. So, here I am, glad to be of help to my family, but still in my own home with room for Katie.

I wonder about how it will be when Katie moves out. Living alone is easy for me. I always have lots to occupy my mind and my time, but still it’s cozier to have someone you expect to come home at the end of a work day. Needing another who also needs you is good and couples that can live long enough with each other and who have a lifetime of memories to share, must be best of all. If I were to answer the question of “What would you do...?” now I’d say to Wally G, “I'm not going anywhere and I'm telling you, 'Stick around and don’t make me answer that! I need you, Pal! We can be an asset to each other!'” 

Katie says, “Grandma, I want you to keep on living so if you ever need a home you can come live with Jeff and me! We’re going to have babies, I hope, and we’ll need you!” Yes, we old folks have a lot to share. If we can catch the great grandies before they get hooked on TV and computer games we can make our stories more fascinating than all the make believe artists can dream up in the movies and on TV. We can make their ancestors, their heritage, so vivid and alive through our true tales and old picture albums that in years to come they’ll know we were a real asset to their lives. 

If you doubt that, just think what it would be like to have your great, great, great grandparents drop in now to tell you of their lives and paint their words so well that you can feel it, see it, be in it, as if on a holographic deck. Don’t hold your breath, but we may be coming to that. You'll really be needed then!

How Times Do Change!

“ Another day, another dollar.” I don’t know who first uttered those words or in what context they came. Couldn’t find the answer on the Internet. I suspect they came in a time when a dollar a day was the going pay for a day’s labor. Imagine that!

Well, I don’t have to imagine $5.00 as being a day’s wages because that’s what my father was paid working for the Water Department in Laguna Beach back in 1938. It was hard work too, like digging ditches for water lines, repairing broken water lines, and that sort of thing.

Daddy did it without complaint because he was trying to fulfill Mother’s desire to live in sunny California rather than the state of Minnesota where she had always lived before. One visit to her mother, my Grandmother Darling, had hooked her. 

Mother was not well, had been given up by the doctors at Mayo Clinic. She was not expected to live long. I’ve always said Daddy would have moved to Timbuktu for her. But instead he leased the Standard Oil gas station he owned, packed up our old Buick, left our home near the little town of Preston with Mother, my two brothers and me, and moved us kit ‘n caboodle (another old expression) to California a week or so before the Christmas of 1937. Grandmother lived in Laguna Beach with her Uncle Chet and they had rented a cottage for us only two blocks from the ocean. 

Things began to look up when Daddy got work. I remember the off and on times he worked for the Water Department because of his pay, $5.00 a day. I remember his smiles when he'd say to Mother, "They hired me again at the Water Department, Faithie!" Now my father was no stranger to hard work. He had built the country gas station in Minnesota on a five acre tract of land which was a part of the family homestead. He’d planted trees there, dug a well there, set up a “wind electric” there, and struggled to build up his business selling gasoline and oil to farmers with tractors, neighbors, travelers on the two main highways, 52 and 16 that intersected at that corner. But in California, as all across the nation, we were still in the throes of the Great Depression. Times were hard.

I don’t remember a word of complaint about the jobs Daddy took wherever he could find them. One was with Bert, the Roofer. He was not familiar with the composition materials used on that roof and accidentally poured hot tar over his hands. This not only put him out of work but served to cause my father to yell out in pain as he soaked his hands in Epsom salts. His one complaint, without words. After two years he and Mother decided it was time to go back to the station and our Minnesota home. That winter Mother died at the age of 35. 

 “Another day, another dollar,” reminds me of those hard times. When I hear about couples that quarrel in front of their children I think of my parents and how I seldom heard them quarrel. If they did, they were careful not to do it in front of my brothers and me. Money was precious but our wants were few. A lollypop or bottle of root beer was a real treat for us kids. Even a coloring book or pad of paper were precious possessions. Now? Now children enjoy an overload of toys. They are carried off to entertainment parks and swimming pools and restaurants. And when they are older and discover money a dollar is a relatively small sum to have in the pocket. Seldom is it earned by them. 

When I was a child back in the old days I didn’t know much about money but I did know that Daddy’s $5. a day job was enough to pay our rent of $25. a month and buy us food and clothing. The job was only when they needed him though so it was not steady. No unemployment pay then. My brothers and I spent happy carefree days at Divers’ Cove in the summer. In winter we walked to school and I could enjoy a class in singing chorus, take ballet lessons after school, play marbles during recess. I carried a lunch bag because we couldn't afford to buy lunch at the school cafeteria. That only bothered me a little. I never had, or needed, money to carry in my pocket. I wouldn’t have known what to do with a crisp dollar bill! 

How times do change!